Chapter 8 - Listen Carefully
I didn’t answer Claire’s text.
At nine the next morning, I sat in the child therapist’s office while Emma colored a page full of crooked blue hearts and told Dr. Singh about “the bad secret house.”
The playhouse.
Dr. Singh kept her voice calm and neutral, but when Emma said, “Claire smiles when she’s the meanest,” even the therapist’s pen paused.
After the appointment, Emma went with Rosa for ice cream while I met Detective Ortiz at a coffee shop across town.
I gave her the backup clip and Rosa’s statement.
Ortiz watched the footage on a tablet, expression unreadable.
“Good,” she said when it ended.
“Good?”
“Good evidence,” she clarified. “Bad woman.”
That was the first time I almost smiled in two days.
She leaned forward. “Has Ms. Holloway tried to come back?”
“Not physically.”
“Keep it that way.”
When I got home, the indoor cameras had already been installed. I connected them and waited.
I didn’t have to wait long.
Just after six, Claire used the side gate code she shouldn’t have known anymore. She must have gotten in before the locks finished updating.
I saw her on my phone first—moving through the mudroom with her shoes in one hand, quiet as a thief.
I didn’t go downstairs.
I watched.
Claire stepped into the kitchen and put her phone to her ear.
“Yes,” she whispered. “He’s turning Emma against me.”
A pause.
Then: “No, not yet. If he thinks she’s unstable, he’ll send her away. He always folds when he’s scared.”
My skin prickled.
She laughed softly. “I know exactly how to make him scared.”
I started recording from the app.
Claire turned, saw the red light of the camera in the corner, and froze.
Then she smiled right at it.
“Hi, Ethan,” she said.
My phone rang a second later.
It was Emma’s school.
“Mr. Mercer?” the receptionist said, voice tight. “There’s been a misunderstanding. Emma was picked up ten minutes ago.”
“What?”
“Ms. Holloway said you sent her.”
The camera still showed Claire standing in my kitchen.
May you like
Smiling.
Then the feed cut to black.
